Oh, how I wish you wouldn't fall in for this. Christians did the same terrible things in the name of their religion too. They were no better. It's just matters of time and place - and politics and oil and Western Colonialism, lest we forget.

Who did Christians ever stone? We "grew out of it" when we left Judaism. Both the "Inquisition" and "Crusades" were both "reactions" to Islam (the Inquisition from the perfidy of Jewish-Islamic collaboration)

Thersites, I don't know how you came to these conclusions or how they are tied to my comment, or how you could possibly have such questions. You should know better.

Ida, my dear, the reality of Islam is that when Christians were living like dogs in the woods in the Dark Ages, Muslims made sure our Classical Western Heritage was preserved, and maintained a massive stable empire for hundreds of years, a Pax Islam, if you like. The reality is that obviously Islam itself is not the source of the problem. It may not be helping, it may be a rhetorical excuse, but it is not the source.

I would heartily and easily argue that all religion is a huge problem, imbuing hypocrisy and irrationality, which produces cognitive dissonance and general discord, and should be considered a thing of the past to be admired and studied and remembered but no longer accepted as something we actually take literally and to be true. And I am no fan of Islam, it is my least favorite religion. But there is little difference in the theology of the Abrahamic faiths, and huge differences in cultures and histories and places and times.

Take the Sauds, who've long now ruled most of Arabia and wield tremendous influence in the Middle East and beyond. These are the ancestors of rather primitive, overly religious (superstitious), wandering Wahhabi clans who very recently, the last hundred years, suddenly became filthy rich (oil) and suddenly were this major political player. A hundred years ago, no one cared a whit about the "Sauds." They were backwards clans scattered through barren land. Now they are an aristocracy similar to France in the Middle Ages with thousands of family members and titles and little emirates they've set up for themselves as playpens for the filthy rich, whilst the general population of the region is mired in poverty and war. You think they might be a problem?

I don't know if stoning, in particular, was practiced in the West very much ever, before or after Christianity. Whereas in places where it is practiced today or has been, the practice predated Islam and/or kind of tagged along in some places. But this is the sort of tangent I don't care to get into. It's just more parsing.

The point is that horrific atrocities have been committed in the name of Christianity or were aided directly or indirectly by it. To deny this is just delusional, especially for a man so obviously well-rounded.

If our friend Jersey wants to argue that the Germans who persecuted the Jews were CAUCASIAN, we couldn't deny it, but being "WHITE" does not mean one should automatically be categorized as "Christian."

An awful lot of spaghetti has been throw against the wall here. What a mess!

Jersey, I think you are making the all too common mistake of evaluating the PAST by imposing CURRENT standards on it.

Whatever glorious achievements may –– or may not –– have made in the distant past has nothing to do with the deplorable conditions in which the vast majority of Moslems live today.

By the same token the admittedly barbaric practices of the ancient Jews, chronicled in excruciating detail in the Torah, which we Christians call "The Old Testament," and the horrifying, barbaric authoritarianism practiced by those who dared defined themselves as "Christians" in Mediaeval Europe –– a true Reign of Terror by toys standards –– were beyond deplorable, they were DESPICABLE.

HOWEVER, the POINT I would have you understand, and hope you will one day come to accept, is that NONE of that applies TODAY.

Before I go any farther, I would correct you on one point. The Europeans whom describe as "living like wild dogs in the woods" were NOT "Christian." They were the Huns, the Goths, the Visigoths, Vikings, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and wild Celtic tribes, etc. ALL of these people were PAGAN. NONE of them were CHRISTIAN at the time Rome disintegrated and fell prey to invading barbarian hordes from the North.

No civilization has yet attained Perfection, Jersey, –– and frankly I doubt that any ever WILL ––, but the FACT remains that –– like it or not –– WHITE, WESTERN, CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION with all its blunders, errors in judgment, and terrible periodic setbacks really DID achieve a far more ADVANCED, REFINED, ENLIGHTENED, nd HUMANE aggregation of various regional cultures than any OTHER recognized force in human history.

I believe it should be encumbent upon us build ON our frankly excellent foundation NOT try to undermine, destroy, and discard it.

Sure, I agree, and wouldn't be lovely if money grew on trees, and the Fountain fo Youth really did exist, and that all manner of illness was banished forever from the face of the earth?

§;^D=

"The mills of God grind slowly, but exceedingly fine."

I wouldn't spend too much time pondering things beyond ur control, if i were you. ALL we can do is work very hard to be the best that we can be, then let the chips fall where they may.

I TRUST the Lord. That in itself is a great comfort, but it doesn't mean I expect my life to be free of trouble and challenges I would prefer not to have to confront. It only means I'm better prepared to be a good sport about misfortune should it arrive.

As for the Old Testament's various harsh teachings, the New Testament revised them. I use the word "revised" as a convenience as I do not long for nor do I have time for a huge theological debate -- a discussion which will fall on deaf ears, anyway.

But the opposite is true in the Quran in that the recent verses are the militant ones ("Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them"), and the older verses (abrogated by new revelations from Allah) are the peaceful ones.

Islam is as Islam does.

When is the last time that you heard a Christian scream "In the name of Jesus Christ, I kill you"?

You and I have discussed our different interpretations of the Old Testament and have more or less agreed to disagree. There's no need to rehash all that here. I am a Christian, but a non-fundamentalist for sure, That means I firmly believe that any "teaching" that has no hope of serving the advancement of Kindness, Mercy and Justice over a harsh, literal, merely legalistic application of The Law is anathema –– I.e. ungodly.

Mortal men obsessed with a Power Agenda have never been above inserting self-serving thoughts of their OWN into the pages of Holy Writ. This is one of Satan's cleverest and most effective ways of gaining control of the temporal world. ––– Or so I believe.

What's been happening in Sweden, and in Germany, is hideous. But the lamestream media, and the leftist newscasters such as CNN are trying to hide it from us, and just ignore reporting it. And why is that? Because Donald Trump predicted it and he WAS talking about it. It’s Sickening!The politically correct Lefty crowd doesn't want to appear Islamophobic so they turn a blind eye to the worst of the worst and that's how the rot sets in.

It's like in the U.S. where the Federal Government under Obama refused to keep statistics on crime by illegals even though they have entire departments to track statistics on every other kind of crime. They don't want the information to get out there in a way they would have to deal with it. They don't want to believe, or they don’t want us to know that these Muslim Refugees are anything but a persecuted bunch of missed placed and misunderstood .Sweden had just 100k of these Muslim “Refugees”. Now they have 500k. More and more Muslims are flooding the country every year. They are now expected to take on another 250,000 so called “Refugees”.So look at what’s happening in Germany, look at what’s happening in Sweden. Rape, robbery, aggravated assault, rape-assault and rape again, and again....violence against the police, threats to police, drug crime, felony, murder, and attempted murder. Anti-Zionism and anti-Israel sentiments in Sweden has run amuck.Who would have believed this Didn't the left have fun with that claiming Trump was an idiot?

But then, two days later riots, fires and mayhem broke out in Sweden and we saw this past week another attack in Germany.But fortunately that's changing with the election of President Trump. We finally have a President who is willing to say the words "radical Islamic terrorism" and take the tough steps necessary to limit and vet refugee entry into the United States. How many more innocent citizens in Sweden, Germany and elsewhere will have their lives shattered because of left wing political correctness and it's blindness to the problem?

I think you're basically correct, Unknown. The question is how can we deal effectively with the starry-eyed liberal idealists who refuse to accept any unpleasant reality that denies the fanciful vision liberals have of the world.

Obviously these people look at life through rose-colored glasses the lenses of which BLIND them to DIRE THREATS to the peace and stability they SAY they hope to achieve.

Methinks you take the route to the too obvious conclusion to which the media propagandists are driving the wagon today. Most normal human beings react the same to the horrific images. But if anyone is paying attention they should be getting suspicious of the overriding control of the "intelligence agencies" exerting over some selected stiffs to be groomed to "act their part" in terrorizing the population.

Mysteriously or not, coincidently or not, it does seem that certain people have been meeting an untimely demise. There seems to a a particularly large swath of deaths occurring where truth is close to being uncovered i areas such as wide spread pedophelia in the political ranks of Washington and world politicians. Writers or pundits who get close to revealing any "truths" about the sham President that sat on the American throne for the previous eight years have been "offed".

Ant writer or pundit getting too close to the truth about the undue influence of Saudi Arabia upon the political power structure of Washington and their agent BHO, their bought and paid for head of the CIA, John Brennan—all seem to have reached an expiry date before their proper time: Michael Hasting, Andrew Breitbart and Tom Clancy.

Are we still waitin for President Donald Trump to drain the swamp? Because this is the real swamp that has to be drained.

Funny! No one noticed or bothered to comment on the parody of I'm an Indian Too from Annie, Get Your Gun. Very clever, but do you really think it appropriate to joke abut a subject as deadly serious as Islam's abuse of women?

Gratuitous Displays of Extraneous Knowledge Offered Not To Shed Light Or Enhance the Discussion, But For The Primary Purpose Of Giving An Impression Of Superiority are obnoxiously SELF-AGGRANDIZING, and therefore, Subject to Removal at the Discretion of the Censor-in-Residence.